Bush House Retrospective

excerpt of an article which was published July 18 in the Centre Daily Times, part of the "Looking Back" series. It is an account of Daniel G. Bush and the building of the Bush House, a historic Bellefonte structure that was destroyed by fire this morning.

...Linn, in his monumental "History of Centre and Clinton Counties, Pennsylvania," published in 1883, described the hotel.

"The building has a front of one hundred and forty-five feet on High Street, with wings of one hundred and twenty feet each. It is built of brick, four stories high, and contains one hundred and twenty-five sleeping apartments, with ample accommodations for three hundred guests. The house is supplied with all modern conveniences and is thoroughly ventilated. Halls twenty feet wide extend the entire length of the building. Every floor (is) supplied with cold spring water and hot and cold baths."

The first floor, according to Thomen' account, housed a drugstore, a grocery store, a newspaper office, a bookstore, a plumbing establishment, a tobacconist, a barber shop and a restaurant.

The Bush House was one of what Linn called "three prominent hotels of Bellefonte," the others being the Brockerhoff House and the Garman House.
The Bush House cost, by Linn's estimate, $60,000 to build and was "one of the most perfectly appointed, as well as one of the most commodious, hotels in Central Pennsylvania."

**Just as a note -- the other two hotels are still around. The Brockerhoff House is now low income senior housing, and the Garman House is now a local bar and apartments.